US News Andrew Coffee IV was acquitted of felony murder after he fired at police officers who raided his home in the middle of the night. After Coffee fired at officers, police fired back killing Alteria Woods - the woman Coffee is on trial for killing. Coffee was still convicted on a felony weapons charge and faces up to 30 years. [Link] The Justice Department will pay about $130 million to the families of 16 of the 17 Parkland school shooting victims families. All but one of the families of the murdered kids sued the DoJ for the FBI failing to follow up on a tip about how Nikolas Cruz...
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What We Have to Gain from a National Default
The Biden administration's rhetoric on the debt ceiling has become nothing short of apocalyptic. The Treasury Department has announced that a failure to increase the debt ceiling "would have catastrophic economic consequences" and would, as NBC news claims, constitute a "doomsday scenario" that would "spark a financial crisis and plunge the economy into recession." Apparently, the memo went out to the debt peddlers that they are not to hold back when sowing maximum fear over the thought that the U.S. might government might pause its incessant debt accumulation even for a few days. The...
News Roundup 7/26/21
US News The New York Post reports the NY state government is considering divesting from Ben and Jerry’s parent company in the state government workers' pension fund. [Link] The Biden Administration decided against investigating possible civil rights abuses in NY nursing homes because of the policies of Andrew Cuomo. [Link] The Jan. 6th Congressional select committee includes former CIA Inspector General David Buckley. Buckley has a history of retaliating against whistleblowers. [Link] Afghanistan CENTCOM head Gen. McKenzie says the US will continue to support the Afghan government with...
Federal Police Beat Veteran, Supreme Court May Hear Case
José Oliva survived the bloodiest year in Vietnam, but he most feared for his life when he was brutally beaten in an unprovoked attack by federal officers in a Veterans Affairs hospital in his hometown of El Paso, Texas that left him with several injuries, two of which required surgery. On January 29, 2021, the Institute for Justice filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to reverse the 5th Circuit decision that ruled federal officers—such as those in a VA hospital—may act with impunity and not be held accountable for their actions, no matter how unconstitutional. “I feared...
Testing Positive for COVID-Bootlicking
The COVID pandemic has shown how easy it is to make people hate anyone who is not as frightened as themselves. Since last March, politicians and health officials have fanned fears to commandeer far more control over Americans’ daily lives. And millions of Americans have been happy to condemn any violators of the endlessly changing rules. After the start of the COVID pandemic, my local Harris Teeter grocery store in Montgomery County, Maryland voluntarily made extensive changes to safeguard its employees and customers. But one panicky customer wailed to the local health department that he...
Libertarian Messaging For 2021: Part 2
Let’s just jump right in since you can go to part 1 and see my yada, yada qualifications and such. Here’s the Tweet: End all corporate bailouts/welfare For those of you who remember the great recession of 2008, or have read about it in books such as Tom Woods’ classic, Meltdown, you recall that the majority of the people were against the bank bailouts. Did that stop your “betters” in DC from bailing out their biggest campaign donors? No, it did not. Did any of you who lost a house or savings or any wealth you worked your ass off for get a bailout? None of us did. And the elite power...
Short-sighted state governments rack up $1 Trillion in liabilities
As if the national debt and federal entitlement liabilities weren’t enough. Now we get word that state governments have racked up more than a trillion dollars in unfunded healthcare benefits for state government workers. That’s trillion – with a ‘T’. In a report released earlier this month, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) revealed the total, adding “That’s an average of $3,107 of unfunded OPEB liabilities for every resident of the United States.” The financial liabilities, labeled “Other post-employment benefits,” or OPEB for short, calculate the present value of health...
A National $15 Minimum Wage Would Be A Huge Mistake
The debate about raising the minimum wage is a hot topic among presidential candidates and voters across the spectrum. The whole Democratic Party is in favor of increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and 56 percent of the American electorate agrees with that proposal. Prominent hopefuls in the Democratic Party like Bernie, Warren, Kamala or Cory Booker, are all pushing for increasing the wage to $15. A $15 minimum wage sounds awesome in theory, but it’s going to be a big mistake if that proposal became law. It will have many negative effects on the people, and on the economy...
Bicoastal Hoity-Toities and the Imperial City
As measured by household income, nine of the twenty wealthiest counties in the USA surround metro Washington, D.C., or if you will, the Imperial City. Three of the twenty wealthiest counties are in New Jersey. My wife and I used to live in one of them, and, to top it off, in one of the wealthiest towns in that county. We used to take the Metroliner to and from D.C., observing the depressing conditions along much of the way. Since my wife is from rural western Penn., and since I’m from a working-class neighborhood in St. Louis, we always felt like misfits on the East Coast. When we...
The Antiwar Comic: Every School Kid Knows
Today's Antiwar Comic is more of a civics lesson than anything else. It occurred to me that we teach all this high and mighty wonderful stuff about America and it's kinda b.s. For more comics visit the Webcomic...
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